“It is futile to declaim vaguely against all popular music.”

Defending the value of popular forms that express ordinary life · Article, New Statesman (1921)

• Criticism
• Culture
• Music

“The text of an opera, the words of a song, the program of a symphony or tone poem, or whatever name in the future may be given to any musical composition is of no importance or significance whatsoever.”

Insisting that music speaks adequately on its own without literary crutches · Book, Berlioz: The Man and His Work (1934)

• Art
• Expression
• Music

“Mozart's mental grip never loosens; he never abandons himself to any one sense; even at his most ecstatic moments his mind is vigorous, alert, and on the wing. He dives unerringly on to his finest ideas like a bird of prey, and once an idea is seized he soars off again with an undiminished power.”

Praising the intellectual precision that sustains Mozart's emotional intensity · Essay or biography on Mozart

• Genius
• Mind
• Music

“Everything has a cause and the cause of anything is everything.”

A concise statement of total interconnectedness of causes · Novel, Blow for Balloons (1935), chapter 1

• Causes
• Complexity
• Philosophy

“I can confidently and in soberness declare that Wagner is a colossal fraud.”

A characteristically outspoken dismissal of a towering figure by an independent critic · Music criticism, on the fiftieth anniversary of Wagner's death

• Art
• Criticism
• Music